


More Than Just Magic

by arielmagicesi



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alive Noah, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Blue's a forest ranger, Gansey and Adam are college students, M/M, Ronan's an artist, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-07 12:19:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7714645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arielmagicesi/pseuds/arielmagicesi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Henrietta was in New York instead of Virginia, if Aglionby was a college instead of a high school, if Gansey had been searching for a local legend instead of a sleeping king, if Ronan had been an artist instead of a dreamer, if Blue had known just what she wanted to do with her life, if Noah was alive instead of a ghost, and if Adam was pretty much the same but met his friends in college and also was the author's favorite because the author is me.<br/>Basically, the Raven Cycle with a lot less magic, a lot more character development, and a LOT more Pynch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Meetings

The first time Adam met Gansey had been at a meeting of Student Senate last semester. Adam wasn’t in Student Senate, because he didn’t really care too deeply about student life at Aglionby University, but he’d had to go to that meeting to petition for funds for the Robotics Club. He’d never been fond of asking people for money, but no one else in Robotics had wanted to go, and he had a bad habit of doing unpleasant things in the hopes that it would make somebody like him.

After the meeting, despite Adam’s desperate attempts to get back to his apartment to be alone, Gansey followed after him and pestered him about why he was interested in robotics, what he was studying, which classes he was in. Gansey later told Adam that he’d been struck by how unpretending Adam was- _unpretending,_ Gansey’s word, when Ronan probably would have said _honest_.

Adam had finally given in and gone with Gansey to dinner- the way he saw it, he wasn’t in any position to pass up friendship. Quite frankly, he’d never had any friends before Gansey. He was wary of someone offering friendship so openly and willingly- surely there was something else going on, surely Gansey expected something else in return, or maybe this was pity- but after a few weeks of Gansey insistently spending time with Adam, going out of his way to find him on campus so they could hang out, Adam had begun to believe Gansey really wanted to be friends with him.

 

The first time Adam met Ronan only lasted about two minutes, but it was memorable. About four weeks or so into his friendship with Gansey, in March of their freshman year, they stopped by Ronan’s house to pick up a package that Gansey had had delivered there.

Adam hadn’t planned on getting out of the car, not keen on being directly measured up against Gansey’s other friend, the best friend, the one who could afford a nice house in the nice part of Henrietta at eighteen years old. But he was intrigued by the house- the unkempt lawn, the mess of early spring blooms crawling over the walls, and most of all, the swirls of black paint over the shutters and bricks. Depicting vines, claws, beaks, leaves.

Gansey let out an irritated sigh at the sight of those.

“Right,” he said. “I didn’t tell you. Ronan’s an _artist_.”

The way he said ‘artist’ was delicate, like it was a euphemism, the way someone would say ‘my grandmother _passed_.’ It didn’t seem like Gansey was too fond of his best friend’s hobby.

“I think it looks cool,” Adam said mildly.

Gansey let out an irritated grunt at that and gotten out of the car. Adam, curious now, followed him.

When Ronan let them in the house, he looked Adam up and down and asked Gansey, “Who’s this?”

“Adam Parrish,” Gansey said. “I told you about him. My friend from school.”

“Oh,” Ronan said. “Scholarship kid.”

It sounded like something between an insult and a fact. Like there was venom hiding right behind it, waiting to spring out if necessary.

Adam didn’t say anything, just waited on the front step while Gansey went in to grab his package. Ronan didn’t say anything either.

Then Adam spotted the thing in the living room behind him. A mess of wires and feathers, dripping with black ink.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Then Ronan glared at him.

“None of your fucking business,” he said.

And then Gansey came back with an exasperated expression on his face and said, “Come on, let’s go, Adam,” and they left.

 

The first time Adam met Noah was about a week after that. Gansey had invited him to come to dinner with him and his friends.

“Which friends?” Adam asked.

“Oh, just Ronan and Noah.”

“Who’s Noah?”

Adam had met Ronan just the one time, and heard little snippets about him from Gansey over the past month, but Noah he’d never heard of.

“He’s a grad student,” Gansey said. “We met him a while back while looking for Owen’s box.”

“Owen’s box” was Gansey’s never-ending quest, and the reason he’d come to Aglionby in the first place. Adam had never heard the story before he’d met Gansey, but now he’d heard it about five dozen times. A local legend to Henrietta, Alexander Owen had been known for dabbling in the supernatural, and the story went that he’d found the key to all magic and buried it in a box somewhere when he died. Gansey had made it his life’s work to find that box.

They met with Ronan and Noah at a pizza place, thankfully not Nino’s, which was where the girl Adam had dated for a bit in fall semester worked. Ronan was sitting sprawled out at one of the booths across from Noah, who was clearly older than them but also a little pale-looking, almost sickly.

Adam got a better look at Ronan this time than he’d gotten back at his house- he was quite tall, edgy, and very sulky. Entitled-looking, but in a different way from Gansey. Gansey looked like he was entitled to making all the rules; Ronan looked like he was entitled to breaking them.

“I guess you’re Adam,” Noah said, by way of greeting.

Ronan looked up from where he was folding a napkin into a swan.

“You again,” he said. “I thought it was gonna be just us.”

“Yes, well, I invited Adam because he’s my friend,” Gansey said.

Ronan scowled at this.

“Is he gonna start searching for the box with us now or some shit?” he said.

Adam didn’t appreciate being talked about like he wasn’t there.

“I might,” he replied, looking straight at Ronan. “It sounds interesting.”

Ronan looked back at him, eyebrows raised.

“It’s not,” he said, talking to Adam this time. “It’s fucking boring as shit.”

Adam sat down next to Noah.

“You seem like a pleasant person,” he said, still talking to Ronan.

“I don’t care about being pleasant,” Ronan said.

“Ignore Ronan,” Gansey said, sitting down as well. “He acts like he hates everyone, but he can be a good person if he wants to.”

Gansey didn’t sound like he believed that last part so much.

Adam, for the past few months, had been intent on making some friends at college, but hadn’t been doing such a good job of it. He didn’t know how to make friends. From what he could tell, it involved some believing that you were worth spending time with, and he didn’t believe that he was worth spending time with.

Being friends with Gansey was easy because Gansey made it blatantly obvious he wanted to spend time with Adam. Ronan didn’t seem like he wanted to spend time with anyone at all, and there was something oddly comforting about that. If he was going to hate Adam anyway, Adam had nothing to lose.

“I liked the paintings on the outside of your house,” Adam said, after a few moments of silence when Gansey had gone up to the counter to order them a pizza.

Ronan looked up, a little of the sharpness cut out from his expression.

“Well, you should tell Gansey that,” he said. “He thinks it scares away the neighborhood children.”

“Does it?” Noah asked. “When I was a kid, I would’ve loved seeing a house as creepy as yours.”

“That’s ‘cause you were probably a creepy bastard of a kid, Noah,” Ronan said.

“Gansey doesn’t like things that aren’t… proper, I don’t think,” Adam said. “Which is fine, but not everyone is like that.”

Now Ronan looked interested.

“He’s more open-minded than you think,” he said.

“I didn’t mean it as an insult,” Adam said. “He just doesn’t seem like the type to live somewhere other than a classy Victorian mansion.”

Ronan let out a laugh.

“Actually, didn’t you two live in an abandoned warehouse back in high school?” Noah said. “He told me something about that. Monmouth Manufacturing.”

“An abandoned warehouse?” Adam asked, because that didn’t sound like Richard Gansey III at all.

Then Ronan laughed again. Harsher this time.

“Gansey doesn’t care that my house is different,” Ronan said. “He cares that it isn’t different in the way he wants it to be.”

And now Adam was interested.

 

Everything about the three of them was interesting. The quest for Owen’s box was interesting- the way Gansey spoke about it, like searching for it was the only thing that gave him air, and the way he needed magic desperately because it was something more than the destiny that had been handed to him. Adam could relate to that need.

And Ronan was interesting- his twisted, dark sculptures and beautiful paintings of flowers and birds, how he hated the world and seemed to love so little. Adam knew he had a thousand secrets beneath the surface that he wasn’t telling, and something in him itched to uncover them.

Noah was interesting, too- about five years older than them, he went to Aglionby’s graduate school, where he was pursuing a master’s in performing arts. Adam had been surprised by that- Noah didn’t seem much like the theatrical type in his daily life, preferring to let out his personality in sly comments and subtle actions, but Noah said that it took the right amplifier to bring out his dramatic side. He’d said to Adam one time, “Something made me afraid once, and now I need to be reminded to be brave.”

It was the summer after their freshman year when Adam figured out what that meant.

While Adam lived in his apartment above the local Catholic church, and Ronan lived in his house of horrors, Noah lived in a nice apartment block in downtown Henrietta. He let Gansey room with him for the summer, and Adam came over a lot when he wasn’t at work or at his internship, because Noah actually had air conditioning.

Ronan, Gansey, and Adam were all sitting around in Noah’s apartment while Noah was out running errands when there was a knock on the door.

“I’ll get it,” Gansey said, and got up to answer the door. Ronan and Adam continued to watch the cooking show that was on that they’d been making sarcastic comments about.

The door opened.

“Hello?” said a young, distinctly female voice. “Uh- is Noah here?”

“He’s out,” Gansey said. “He should be back within half an hour, if you want to wait.”

Adam glanced over at the door. A twentysomething woman with pale blond shoulder-length hair was standing there, looking nervous.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” she said. “But who are you?”

“Oh,” Gansey said. “Well, I’m Noah’s friend, Gansey. I don’t believe we’ve ever met.”

The woman’s face turned even paler, if that was possible.

“Gansey?” she said. “Richard Gansey?”

“Yes,” Gansey said. “Noah’s told you about me?”

“He didn’t tell me you were friends,” she said. “I- I’m Noah’s sister, Adele. And you’re… Richard Gansey.”

Adam and Ronan were now both staring at Gansey and Adele.

“Do I know you?” Gansey asked, confused.

Adele looked like she’d seen a ghost. She didn’t speak for a few moments, and everyone just stared at each other.

Finally she said, “You’re the guy my brother took a bullet for when he was fifteen.”

“Wait, _what?_ ” Ronan exclaimed.

Adam had heard the story before. When Gansey had been ten years old, he’d gone to a party and wandered into the woods. A fifteen-year-old boy named Barrington Whelk had been in there searching for Owen’s box, and, believing that a blood sacrifice was necessary to find the box, he’d tried to shoot Gansey. At the last second, his friend had jumped in the way, taken a bullet to the leg, and saved Gansey’s life.

“You don’t know about this,” Adele said, sounding surprised.

“We didn’t know that guy was _Noah_ ,” Ronan said.

“He never told you he was friends with me?” Gansey asked.

“He never told _you_ that he saved your life,” Adele said.

“Maybe he didn’t know it was me,” Gansey said.

“Trust me,” Adele said. “He knows the name Richard Gansey. He hasn’t been able to forget it since that day.”

“God,” Gansey said. He wandered back into the living room and sat down on the couch, head in his hands. Adele wandered in after him.

“All that time,” Gansey said. “I never even knew his name.”

Ronan switched off the TV.

“You know, this explains a lot,” Ronan said. “Like why he wanted to be friends with us so bad, that was probably after he learned your name.”

“And why he was searching for Owen’s box in the first place,” Adam said. “Same reason as you. Because of that guy Whelk.”

“And that’s why Noah sometimes walks funny,” Ronan said. “’Cause he got shot in the fucking leg.”

“Ronan,” Adam hissed.

“What? He does sometimes walk funny.”

Adele looked very uncomfortable, so Adam said, “Do you- do you want to sit down? Noah should be back any second.”

At that moment, Noah walked in the door, holding a bag of groceries, and froze when he saw Adele.

“Shit,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Adele crossed her arms.

“Finding out that you’re friends with Richard Gansey,” she said.

Noah threw his hand over his face.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he said. “Damn it. Gansey- I promise I was gonna tell you- I just never found the right time-”

“It’s perfectly all right, Noah,” Gansey said, looking up finally from the couch. “I… it was a traumatic experience for the both of us. I don’t much like talking about it either.”

But they did talk about it, for quite a while now. Knowing that Noah was the friend that Barrington Whelk had shot seemed to complete some sort of circle in the group. Gansey, the child who chose to make the quest for Owen’s box noble instead of deadly. Noah, the teenager who had saved his life. Ronan, Gansey’s best friend, who would always be at his side.

And Adam, who had never been part of the story.

He was trying to write himself into it.

 

The first time Adam met Blue was before any of that.

He’d met her at Nino’s, stopping there for dinner one night, and had been struck by the fire behind her eyes. He’d asked her out and she’d said yes, and they’d gone on a few short, sweet dates around Henrietta. But then Adam had ruined it, just like he ruined everything, by wanting too much, and trying to pressure her into a physical relationship too fast. She’d told him exactly what she thought of that and broken up with him.

Every time he looked back on that breakup, he cringed. Everything Blue had said to him was right- he’d turned her into an object, just something to leech warmth and touch off of. He hadn’t considered what she wanted, her needs and possible fears. And he hadn’t been fair to her, not at all.

After the breakup, he’d hoped to never run into her again.

Now it was fall again, the fall of sophomore year, and Gansey had a new idea of where to look for Owen’s box- Henrietta’s small state park.

“Forest magic,” he’d insisted. “It says right here,” and then he held up a book with infuriatingly tiny text, “that Owen was researching forest magic around the time in his life when he was seeing Vivian. You know, his-”

“-mistress,” Adam finished, since he knew an uncomfortable amount about the life of Alexander Owen at this point.

“Right. Anyway, Vivian inspired a lot of his journal entries that _also_ included the idea about the key of magic. And they spent a lot of time in forests together, particularly-” He jabbed at a map. “This one. Much of which was cut down in the 1930s, however, some parts of it have been salvaged into the Henrietta State Park.”

“Great,” Ronan said, leaning against Gansey’s Camaro. They were all waiting outside the entrance to the state park for Gansey to finish lecturing them on why they were there. “So are we gonna start this hike or what? I’m meeting Matthew later today.”

Matthew was Ronan’s little brother, and as far as Adam could tell, the only person in the world that could make Ronan genuinely smile. Adam had met him a few times and he was a really sweet kid. Adam had also had the misfortune of meeting Ronan’s older brother, Declan, and witnessing several unpleasant fights as a result.

“You won’t be late to meet Matthew,” Gansey said. “I don’t plan for us to spend longer than an hour in here. If we spend too long, I fear we’ll get lost in details, rather than following our instincts.”

Gansey was always talking about following instinct- according to Owen, instinct was vital for finding magic.

Adam didn’t really believe that, but then again, he didn’t really believe in magic. He hoped for magic. He dreamed about magic. He wanted it. But he didn’t do believing.

Gansey tightened the straps on his expensive backpack and led the way into the state park. Ronan and Adam followed after. Noah was at class at the time- ever since he’d revealed his real identity, over the summer, he’d been spending less and less time with them. It was also his last year at grad school, and he was busy.

For a while, they walked on the hiking trail in silence. Adam liked the woods; he felt most at peace there. Trees, Adam thought, were a lot better than people. They couldn’t speak to you, they couldn’t hurt you. The concept of _want_ was foreign to them.

Gansey seemed at home on the trail as well, clearly having gone on fancy hiking trips a thousand times in his childhood. He was all decked out in hiking gear. It would have looked ridiculous on Adam, but it fit Gansey perfectly.

And Ronan- Adam still didn’t know what to think about Ronan.

They were friends now, that was for sure. They hung out without Gansey a lot, which was, to be frank, nicer than hanging out with Gansey there, in the case of Ronan. In front of Gansey, Ronan got possessive and defensive. When it was just him and Adam, something about him loosened.

Adam had seen a lot of his art by now- those wild sculptures that looked like a mess at first glance and evolved into nightmares when you looked a little longer. He also knew that the nightmares were because of Niall Lynch, who had been a good father in Ronan’s mind, and a terrible father in reality if you asked anyone else. Not that it was a good idea to ask Ronan, as he hated talking about it.

Fathers were not Adam’s favorite topic, so he was glad not to talk about it.

Mostly, he and Ronan wasted time. Adam hated wasting time, but it felt less like a waste with Ronan, who made every annoying pastime dramatic and artful. Last week, they’d driven up to some supposedly haunted old road and Adam had sat around and done his homework while Ronan waited for someone else to show up so he could scare them. No one had shown up, so they’d gone to a supermarket in the area instead and crashed a shopping cart in the parking lot. It had all been pointless and really fun.

In the woods, now, Ronan looked a little tense. He always looked tense, to be fair, but something bothered him about this place. It was strange- he looked like an indigenous species of the forest, like he had been born amongst the trees- he looked better here than in civilization. It struck Adam that Ronan’s tattoo and most of his spiky, dangerous artwork were very reminiscent of spindly branches covered in vines and leaves.

But Ronan looked tense.

Adam’s train of thought was interrupted by a shout of excitement from Gansey.

“Alas!” he exclaimed, which made both Adam and Ronan cringe. “A finding.”

He was looking at an old, rotted stump on the ground. Upon a closer look they saw that there was a smudge near the bottom of it.

“Wow, Gansey,” Ronan said. “You really are going senile.”

“It’s an arrow key,” Gansey said. “Owen’s symbol. You don’t recognize it?”

Adam knelt down next to the tree to examine it. Actually, when he really looked at it, it did resemble the arrow key- a circle attached to a line, crossed with an arrow, the symbol Owen had used to represent his search for the key to magic. He didn’t know how Gansey had spotted it, but now that he thought about it-

“Actually,” Adam said, “I noticed smudges like this on the bottom of a lot of the trees here. I just thought it was some weird thing, like the forest rangers marked them or something, but now that you point it out- they could have been Owen’s symbol.”

“And why exactly,” Ronan said, “would Owen have painted a bunch of trees with his symbol?”

“Great question, Ronan!” Gansey said. “Perhaps he was attempting a ritual. Or _perhaps_ \- he anticipated that one day, someone would be searching for his box in these very woods. Perhaps this is a message from him.”

Ronan rolled his eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me. We should go further into the woods and look for more marked trees.”

“How long is that gonna take?” Ronan asked, but Adam could tell he was more intrigued than impatient. When it came down to it, Ronan liked the quest just as much as the others did.

“Depends what we find,” Gansey said. “Come on. _Excelsior_.”

He trampled into the unpathed woods, Ronan and Adam following in his wake.

They hadn’t made it too far off the trail when a voice shouted, “Excuse me? Who do you think you are?”

Adam froze.

He knew that voice.

The three of them turned around to see a short young woman, hair caught in a mess of clips, arms crossed, in a park ranger’s uniform, decidedly furious.

“I’m sorry,” Gansey said, polite as always. “Are we doing something wrong?”

Adam stared at the ground, not wanting the woman to see him, because it was Blue Sargent.

Luckily, she was too busy being angry at Gansey to notice Adam.

“Yes, you’re doing something wrong,” she said. “What do you think these trails are here for? Just for fun? No, it’s to protect the rest of the forest, asshole. You’re not entitled to just march all over the woods wherever you like.”

Gansey looked both scared and amused.

“Do you talk like that to everyone who makes an innocent mistake?” he asked.

Blue’s expression was not improved by this comment.

“No, but I can tell you three are entitled rich boys from Aglionby- Adam?”

Adam sighed and looked up.

“Hey, Blue,” he said.

Ronan’s eyebrows shot up.

“You two know each other?” he asked.

“How about you get back on the trail before we trade life stories,” Blue said.

Despite himself, Adam’s face slipped into a small smile- if there was one person who might be able to face off against Ronan, it probably would be Blue.

Gansey and Ronan reluctantly headed back towards the trail, and Adam walked over to Blue.

“You’re hanging out with some Aglionby dickheads?” she hissed at him.

“Nice to see you, too,” Adam said.

She turned a little red- it was definitely still awkward between them.

“And they’re my friends,” Adam said. “They’re not so bad.”

Blue made a noise that indicated that she doubted that.

“So, what’s the deal here?” Ronan said, when they were back on the path. “There’s rules to this forest that we’re not supposed to break?”

“Believe it or not,” Blue said, eyes narrowing, “being a rich, white, male Aglionby student does not actually entitle you to owning every piece of land on the earth.”

“I’m not an Aglionby student,” Ronan said.

“Not the point,” Blue said. “You don’t know what you’re doing out there. I do. I’ve trained for this job. You haven’t. You’re trampling the soil and essentially suffocating the trees. There is a reason we ask you to stay on the trails.”

Ronan stared her down. Blue stared right back. Gansey looked surprised. Adam was highly entertained.

“Well,” Ronan said finally. “At least there’s a real reason for the rules.”

“We really are sorry for leaving the path,” Gansey said. “It was presumptuous of us.”

Before Blue could say something snarky in response, Ronan said, “Can we get back to why Parrish knows this girl?”

“I have a name,” Blue said. “Blue Sargent.” She gestured to the name tag on her uniform, which said _Junior Park Ranger_ in little letters under her name. “And I know Adam because we dated for a bit last year.”

Ronan and Gansey’s eyes both widened. They turned to Adam.

“You never told us about this,” Gansey said.

Ronan looked like he’d just gotten the best news of his life. Adam could practically see the gears turning in his head to come up with insulting jokes about this.

“Well,” Blue said, looking awkward. “I see the company he keeps has decreased in quality. If you don’t mind, I have a job to do, unless you need me to keep babysitting you.”

She turned and started walking back down the path. A pang of guilt struck Adam- they hadn’t ended things very well. _He_ hadn’t ended things very well. And this hadn’t been much of a post-breakup reunion.

Some part of him, seeing Blue confident and sure of herself in this new life, wanted to be friends with her.

Adam made a decision.

“Wait, guys,” he said to Gansey and Ronan, who were still exchanging some sort of meaningful look. “One sec.”

He ran down the path after Blue, which led Ronan to make a disgruntled noise.

“Blue,” he said, catching up with her. “Hey.”

She looked up. “What?”

Adam sighed. “I- I didn’t leave things very well. When we broke up. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Blue’s head tilted, like she was trying to figure out what he meant, and then she let out a small chuckle. “Bit late for an apology.”

Adam pressed his hand into his forehead.

“I know, I know. I just… I didn’t know how to talk to you after all that, and I know how I treated you was wrong. And I thought you had moved on with your life- which it looks like you have- but I still think you should know that I really am sorry.”

Her eyes softened a bit.

“Well, thank you for saying that,” she said. “You’re a good person, Adam. But I don’t think we’re ever getting back together.”

“What?” he said. He hadn’t even considered that- the thought of dating Blue again was absurd to him, something from a different life. She was still very attractive and he admired her, but he didn’t think they were really compatible anymore. “No, I didn’t mean that. But I would like to be friends, maybe.”

Blue smiled. “Yeah, you could do with some friends who aren’t…” She gestured over at Gansey and Ronan with an irritated expression.

“Ha,” Adam said drily. “They are a little obnoxious sometimes, I’ll grant you that. Ronan especially.”

“Which one’s Ronan? Edgy tattoo boy or President Cell Phone?”

Adam laughed. “Jesus. Yeah, he’s the one with the tattoo. The other one’s Gansey.”

“Gansey? Is that some rich people name?”

“Technically, yes. It’s his last name. His first name’s… Richard.”

Blue made a face. “Ugh. Gross. I already hate him. At least your friend Ronan is blunt and honest. Whatever. So. You want to be friends, then?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “If that’s all right with you.”

“Of course it is.” She looked happy about it, and Adam’s shoulders fell in relief. “I missed seeing you around Nino’s, to be honest. And you can come here to Henrietta State Park more often-”

“That’s not its name.”

This last bit was from Ronan. Adam hadn’t realized that he’d walked closer to them. Gansey was still a good distance away, examining a mark at the bottom of one of the trees.

“What?” Blue said, looking up at Ronan, who had his arms at his sides and an oddly intense look in his eyes. It was that one Adam sometimes saw on him when he was driving recklessly, or even rarer, when Adam got to see him working on his art- a look without a mask. It betrayed something deep and swirling behind his eyes.

“I said, that’s not its name,” Ronan repeated. “Henrietta State Park. That’s not the forest’s real name.”

This was typical of Ronan. Something unclear, almost like poetry, but said with the conviction of scientific fact.

Blue responded like she spoke that same language.

“What’s the forest’s real name, then?” she asked.

“Cabeswater,” Ronan said.

Gansey looked up.

“Ronan, don’t bother them,” he shouted.

“Cabeswater?” Adam asked, ignoring Gansey. “Where did you get that?”

Ronan crossed his arms.

“My dad took us here,” he said shortly. “He knew the history of the place. Before it became a state park. Before they fucked it up. People called it Cabeswater.”

“What people?” Blue asked. “I’ve never heard about this.”

“The tree people,” Ronan said. “The dreamers. And,” he added, “don’t ask me what that means, because that isn’t the point.”

Blue gave him a scrutinizing look.

“You’re not as insufferable as Gansey,” she said. “But you’re still insufferable. All right, Adam. I want to be friends with you. And I want to find out what the hell you and these two annoying assholes are doing here.”


	2. Ronan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have zero clue what to title the chapters, honestly. The titles will probably be kind of terrible.  
> Also: this chapter will be a little darker and will go into a lot of Ronan's mental health issues. Please let me know if you have any problems with how I addressed them. Since it's in Ronan's POV, there might be some skewed ideas in there, also.

Typically, Gansey was driving Adam back to his and Noah’s apartment, where they were going to do homework or some shit. Ronan hated any kind of academia, so he was glad to get out of hanging out with them.

Matthew had driven up from Singer’s Falls- he’d only just gotten his license that year- and was waiting for Ronan at Nino’s.

His face spread into a smile when he saw Ronan.

“Hey!” he shouted. “I got us cheesy garlic bread. Is that OK?”

Ronan sat down across from him, shrugging.

“Sure,” he said, taking a piece of garlic bread from the plate. He wasn’t very hungry, but he hadn’t seen Matthew in a couple of weeks and he would always indulge his younger brother.

“How are college apps going?” he asked.

“Pretty good,” Matthew said. “I’m already done with my essay, so that’s exciting.”

“Thrilling,” Ronan said sarcastically, smiling.

“Declan says I should-”

“Don’t talk about Declan,” Ronan said.

Matthew sighed. “All right. If you want.”

He continued to tell Ronan about how his senior year was going so far- college applications, track practice, hanging out with friends. It was nothing like Ronan’s senior year, filled with street racing, hangovers, and finally getting expelled.

Ronan listened intently to Matthew’s stories anyway.

Matthew was in the middle of recounting a movie he’d seen the other day when a hand reached in and grabbed his glass of water, then a voice said, “Wait a second.”

Ronan looked up. It was the girl from the forest. Adam’s ex-girlfriend. Blue.

“You work here, too?” Ronan said. “I thought you were a forest ranger.”

Blue flashed a sarcastic smile.

“Yes, some people not only have one job, but two,” she said. “Need more water?”

“Yeah, actually.” Ronan pushed his glass forward, somewhat rudely. Blue spilled some water on the table intentionally while refilling it.

There was something about her that he inherently respected, but there was no way in hell he was going to admit it.

“So,” he said instead. “You said you wanted to find out what we’re doing.”

“I did,” she said. “And your friend the president of the country club told me. You were there.”

As soon as Gansey had realized that Blue was even remotely interested in the quest for Owen’s box, he’d told her the entire story of Alexander Owen’s life. The big, beautiful, romantic version that he believed in, not the version that included any of Owen’s flaws or the fact that people had been killed on the quest for that box.

Ronan was suspicious, though, about why Blue was so suddenly interested. This girl that _happened_ to have dated Adam- a fact he was going to stew over with two hours’ worth of blaring electronica as soon as he got home- just _happened_ to be in the forest where they were looking for Owen’s box, and cared enough to ask for the story? Sure. There was something more to this.

He stared her down with one of his trademark intimidating glares. She turned a little pink, but didn’t back down. Damn it.

“What?” she snapped. “Is there a reason you’re glaring at me or are you just an asshole?”

He was tempted to answer _I’m just an asshole_ , but he wanted to make it clear right away that he was keeping an eye on her.

“Why do you care?” he asked. “Nobody gives a shit about Owen’s box except Gansey and weirdos like him. Why are you suddenly interested?”

Blue laughed, setting down her pitcher of ice water.

“You think I’m an enemy spy? What, are you worried I’m part of some competing group of historians? Aw, you’re more of a loser than I thought,” she said.

Matthew smiled, a bit awkwardly, up at Blue. This type of insult-ridden conversation was not his thing.

It was Ronan’s, though, and he responded, “So why do you give a fuck, then? It’s a boring-ass story.”

“It’s not that boring,” Blue said. “A guy burying the supposed key to magic? That’s pretty cool. Besides, I’m not interested because of Owen.”

“Oh? Then why are you?”

For the first time, Blue took her eyes away from Ronan, back towards the other end of the near-empty restaurant.

“I’m interested because of what you said about the forest,” she said. “That it had a name once. And I’m interested because I want to be friends with Adam again.”

Ronan’s shoulders tensed.

“Now if you don’t mind,” she said, “I have a job to do. Tell me when you want the check. Bye.”

 

There had been a time, before Niall Lynch’s death, when Ronan always painted deliberately, carefully, with delicate paintbrush strokes, every move precise. Occasionally there were still times he painted like that. Tonight was not one of them.

He opened a can of cheap blue paint from the hardware store and spilled it across the canvas that he’d coated in a grey preliminary layer that morning. With a knife, he manipulated it until it was undulating in waves. He opened a cardboard box from under the table that was filled with miniscule shards of glass, and poured some over it. And then he ran his hands over it.

Heavy, dark electronica thudded through the room.

Ronan’s hands were bleeding. Not too badly. Enough to get into the paint. Enough to give him an infection, probably.

This was a very irresponsible way to paint.

When Niall Lynch had been alive, he had painted almost exclusively beautiful things. That, and perfect art forgeries, which were the reason behind the fortune the Lynch brothers had inherited upon his death. But Ronan liked to focus on the paintings that had filled their home when he was young- the sprawling landscapes of farms and fields and endless prairies, of the Irish cliffs and moors, of beautiful women and animals.

Those had been the real Niall Lynch, he thought.

Ronan had never painted things like that. He’d always painted exactly what was in his head, nothing better, nothing worse.

What was in his head _now_ was a lot of ‘worse.’

A shape began to form on the canvas. Out of the mess of indigo and red and blood and glass, there was what appeared to be a fairy. A twisted fairy, like one out of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. Crushing the world in its hands and laughing.

A devil.

It hadn’t even been such a bad day, but Ronan knew by now that bad days weren’t what did this. The horrors were in his head and they liked to come out and play whenever they chose. The slightest thing could trigger them. Even nothing.

Today, he thought, it might have been the memory of his father’s stories of Cabeswater. Or the little spark of pointless anger and jealousy at the thought of Adam dating that forest ranger. Or every time Matthew said Declan’s name. Or just the fact that he existed and no one really wanted him to exist, including himself.

There was a sudden fervent and violent banging on the back door of the house. Ronan startled.

“Jesus,” he muttered. He knew who that was.

Wiping his hands quickly on a nearby towel- fuck, those cuts from the glass were going to hurt tomorrow- he walked out of his studio and through to the screen door that led into his shitty overgrown backyard. He opened it.

“What are you doing here so late?” he asked.

A tiny little girl, with a mess of blond hair and an ever-present dirty sweater and skull cap stared up at him. She didn’t respond.

He sighed. “Come in.”

She stumbled into the den, then made her way into the studio. She knew her way around. She’d been coming over for about six months or so. She rarely spoke, and Ronan didn’t know her name. He just called her Orphan Girl.

He figured out that she lived in one of the small houses whose backyard pressed up against his, separated by an old broken fence. Her parents either didn’t know or didn’t care that she came over all the time, and Ronan wasn’t going to ask about it. She was the kind of kid who broke the rules, like Ronan, and he was fine condoning it.

Orphan Girl had climbed onto a stool and was examining the painting Ronan had just been working on. She tilted her head. The sort of things that scared most kids didn’t scare her, which wasn’t to say that she was fearless- she just got scared of weird shit instead. Like yelling. Ronan didn’t yell at her.

“Me,” she said, sitting down on the stool with her hands placed gently on her legs, like she was posing for an old-fashioned portrait.

“I dunno if I wanna draw you tonight, Orphan Girl,” he said.

She crossed her arms, with a look that said she wasn’t backing down on this.

Ronan wasn’t very good at not giving in with her. “Fine.”

There were a few types of drawings that Ronan didn’t like to do, and portraits of specific people were at the top of the list. He knew why- _a basement full of sketches of Aurora, beautiful hair torn out, hollow eyes, screaming that he’d never draw her again_ \- but he didn’t tell the whole story when he told people why he wouldn’t draw them. He just said, “It’s not my job to define you.”

Orphan Girl was the exception. Without many words, she had insisted, and he had a sketchbook full of drawings of her. Something about her took away the horror Ronan had for portraiture- the idea that he was stealing away someone’s identity. With Orphan Girl, it was not so much of a nightmare. It was calming, actually- capturing her gentle, softened features, like he was drawing what she’d see in a mirror.

She was always a little bit smudgy. Like she was only half-real. Surreal. In some strange way, Ronan thought she was his long-lost twin, even though she was something like six years old and he was almost twenty.

“Here,” he said gently, when he was almost finished. He’d turned off the loud music when she came in and replaced it with some quieter music, and somehow everything in the room had calmed down. His pulse had calmed down. Things in his head were still shit, but not as loudly as before.

Orphan Girl jumped off the stool and walked over to examine the portrait. She gave Ronan a small smile.

“Lost another tooth, huh?” Ronan said, looking down at her.

She nodded. “I’m gonna get my permanent teeth.”

Then she said, “Can I have some cookies?”

Last time she’d come over, about a week ago, Ronan had had a package of chocolate chip cookies. He didn’t have any more of those, but he had some sugary cereal, which he figured was equivalent. Orphan Girl scowled at the non-cookies, but devoured the bowl of cereal anyway.

“You need help getting home?” he asked, when she was done. “It’s dark.”

Orphan Girl shook her head.

When she left, Ronan set the painting of the devil to dry. He didn’t like it- it was too messy. It was a bad idea to paint when he was having a depressive episode, which was what Gansey might have called them if Ronan told him about them.

Right now, Ronan thought he might be able to sleep.

 

Ronan was working, again, on one of the night horror sculptures, when Gansey dropped by.

He couldn’t hold back his irritated groan when he realized who it was at the door. Then he silently chastised himself: _Gansey is your best friend, damn it._

But lately- well, it had been building up for years- Gansey had been annoying him to within an inch of his life. To the point where Ronan had to remind himself why they were friends, sometimes. The memories of years of friendship that were like sunshine. The fact that Gansey had been with him, unmoving, unbreaking, through every ugly bit of his grief back in high school. And there were things about Gansey that Ronan still admired- his fearless ability to see beauty in the world, dreaming of the key to magic.

It was just that on a day-to-day basis, Gansey could be somewhat insufferable.

“Hey, Ronan,” Gansey said lightly, when he walked in. Ronan muttered something back and closed the door behind him.

“What are you doing here?” Ronan asked.

“It’s Saturday,” Gansey said. “I was thinking of going back to the state park to gather more evidence.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ronan said. “Finally managed to clear your fucking schedule enough?”

Gansey had spent the previous week complaining to Ronan every chance he could about how he wanted to return to the state park, but he was just too busy.

“Well,” Gansey said, grimacing a little, “I did have to cancel a visit with Helen. But that can wait. We have a lead, we’ve got to chase it.”

Ronan didn’t offer his opinion on Gansey prioritizing the quest over seeing his sister, especially since Ronan didn’t care much about Gansey’s sister.

“Great,” Ronan said. He started heading back to the studio, Gansey following after him. “Good to know. Let me know how it is.”

“Don’t be like this, Ronan. You’re coming with us.”

“Us?” Ronan asked. “I only see you.”

Gansey stepped delicately over an open box of rusty nails.

“I’m picking up Parrish and Noah and Jane later.”

“Who the fuck is Jane?”

Gansey turned red. “Sorry, Blue. I started calling her Jane as a nickname.”

“Ugh,” Ronan said. “So not only you’re bringing along the tree hugger from hell, you gave her a pointless nickname too?”

“Just be civil for once. Come on. I only just managed to get out of meeting with Helen, we still need to convince everyone else to come along.”

This made Ronan turn from where he was standing by the night horror and give Gansey an amused look.

“You’re just going to surprise them, huh?”

“I texted Adam, he’s not responding. Noah’s not responding either, and I don’t know Jane’s number- oh!”

Gansey’s phone had buzzed. He glanced down at it and read the text. Ronan went back to sanding down bits of wood for the night horror.

“Huh,” Gansey said, after a moment. His voice sounded subdued.

“What?” Ronan asked.

“It’s Adam. He and Blue are coming over. Evidently Blue has dug up some records from the state park that seem interesting, and we’re going to look over them.”

Ronan very intentionally kept working on sanding the wood pieces. He turned to the sculpture and carefully lifted the coat of feathers he’d draped over it, checking to see where there might be holes for splinters to come through.

“I’m busy,” he said shortly.

Gansey crossed his arms.

“If you’re worried about Jane,” he said, “you needn’t be. She’s not going to come into the studio if you don’t want her to, and she’s not the type to judge your art.”

“When did you get to know this girl so goddamn well, anyway?” Ronan asked. “Giving her a nickname and all that shit. How much have you been hanging out with her?”

“If you must know, Adam and Noah and I have been going to dinner at her place of work this week so we can talk about the Owen quest. She’s actually a very intelligent person when you get to know her.”

“You’ve all been going to dinner together?” Ronan said. He didn’t try too hard to hide how he felt about that. “Did you have fun?”

“Ronan,” Gansey said, exasperated. “Perhaps if you gave any indication that you cared for the company of others out in civilization, we would have invited you.”

This ticked Ronan off even more.

“That’s me,” he said through gritted teeth. “The uncivilized one.”

“Not what I said.”

If Gansey knew any of Ronan’s secrets, it would have been what he’d said. No, he wouldn’t have said anything. He wouldn’t be here.

_Gansey’s your best friend. He wouldn’t care about any-_

Ronan shoved that thought away, because he didn’t need to hear that he was being selfish for expecting Gansey to just know that Ronan wanted to die, that he was terrified of becoming Declan, that he was haunted all the time by the thought of Aurora shriveled in her nursing home, that the nightmares he sculpted were not exaggerations, that he could not sleep, that he still raced Kavinsky, that he still drank, that he was gay, and that he could not stop thinking about Adam.

The last two didn’t really belong in a list of horrors, but in the Aglionby world, where Gansey lived, they did.

Telling Gansey his secrets was a mess. Lying to Gansey was unthinkable. So here he was in the middle, every conversation filled up with tension and bad feelings.

“You know,” Gansey said, while Ronan stood there fuming for no explainable reason, “you could always come to Aglionby.”

“That would be,” Ronan said, staring straight into the hollow eyes of his night horror, “exactly what you want. Wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe you need to think about what _you_ want. Or what you need.”

“I’m doing what I want, it’s just not what you want.”

“This is what you want?” Gansey said, incredulously. “To live alone in this house, making endless sculptures and paintings of horrific things, never interacting with anyone, never pursuing anything more, never trying to make a difference-”

It took all of Ronan’s patience to not hurl curses at him. He took a long, shuddering breath, and summoned every single fuck he gave about not destroying his friendship.

“Can we not do this right now?” he said. “If Parrish and his girlfriend are coming over.”

“She’s his ex,” Gansey said, sounding a little relieved.

“Sure.”

They wandered back out into the living room. Through the window, Ronan saw Adam’s shitty car roll into the driveway. He’d finally gotten a car over the summer, through a lot of saving up and a generous employee discount from the used car shop/body shop where he worked as a mechanic.

The two of them got out of the car. They were laughing about something. Ronan’s fists clenched. Blue, most likely, was a good person who did not need to put up with his bullshit.

And yet he knew that he was probably going to make his jealousy blatantly obvious to her. Fucking Christ.

He opened the door for the two of them. Adam walked in to join Gansey on the couch in the living room. Blue stayed outside on the front step, examining the paintings roaming over the side of the house.

“Take a fucking picture, it’ll last longer,” Ronan said.

She turned back to him, looking unimpressed.

“This is the kind of goth punk aesthetic I would have loved when I was fourteen,” she said, then strolled into the house to sit next to Adam on the couch. Barely touching him, but still touching him.

“Aw, you two are so cute,” Ronan said sarcastically, glancing over them. Adam turned red and glared.

“Don’t be an ass, Lynch,” Gansey said, from Adam’s other side.

“What?” Ronan said. “I’m just making an observation. I can’t help it that they’re all over each other.”

“We’re barely touching,” Blue said. “You know we broke up, right? Jeez. They told me you were an asshole.”

“They were right.” Ronan sat down on the armchair opposite the three of them. Adam had his arms crossed, not touching Blue anymore, and he looked incredibly pissed off. Ronan wasn’t sure whether to be pleased about that.

“So,” Gansey said. “If you’re quite done making unnecessary comments. Let’s look over these files you brought, Jane.”

Blue rolled her eyes at the nickname, and pulled a manila folder out of her bag.

“This is mostly stuff from the archives,” she said, placing the folder on the coffee table. “I sort of just picked out all the stuff from around the turn of the century, like, anything that looked interesting from back then. I haven’t really looked it through yet so we’ll have to comb through it.”

“No problem!” Gansey said excitedly. “I love research. Come on, let’s dig in.”

“You fucking nerd,” Ronan said.

This was the Gansey he cared about. The one he stuck around for. The one who was unabashed about what he loved, not what he disdained.

They all dug into the files, reading through them for anything that sounded like Owen. Ronan and Adam by now had a fine-tuned eye for this sort of thing; Blue leaned over Adam to ask questions incessantly, although half the time Gansey answered them before Adam could get to it. Ronan didn’t put a lot of effort into reading. He shot evil looks at Blue and risked a few longing glances at Adam’s hands running over paragraphs of old text, and occasionally skimmed a file for something relevant.

They’d been at it for about twenty minutes when Adam spoke up. “Hang on.”

Ronan and Gansey looked up at him.

“I think I found something,” he said. He was looking down at a yellowing piece of paper with handwriting on it.

“What is it?” Gansey asked.

Adam’s index finger was hovering over one of the cursive words.

“Cabeswater,” he said, still looking down. “That’s what you called it. Cabeswater.”

It took Ronan a moment to realize that although they were sitting in a group, Adam was addressing him specifically.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the forest’s name.”

Adam looked up at him.

“Well, it says it here,” he said. “It’s a letter between two women, and the one who wrote it is talking about her week, and she says here- _I ventured into Cabeswater, the true Cabeswater, for a moment._ And it’s in a paragraph where she’s talking about going into the woods here.”

Gansey leaned over, eyebrows raised.

“Gwendolyn,” he read at the bottom of the page. “Gwendolyn Owen.”

“Owen?” Blue asked, looking up at Gansey. “Is she related-”

“I don’t know,” Gansey said.

His eyes were wide. Ronan had rarely ever seen him look like this.

“I’ve never read any reference to a Gwendolyn Owen,” Adam said. “But considering that Owen had been to this very forest… it’s too much of a coincidence for her not to be related.”

“And the fact that she’s talking about Cabeswater,” Blue said. “And that’s the name of the forest, at least according to Ronan.”

Gansey looked up at Ronan.

“Ronan,” he said. “Why did you call it Cabeswater? How had you known that name?”

They were all looking at him.

This was not something Ronan liked to remember. It wasn’t in a bad way. It wasn’t a good memory or a bad memory. It had an air like a dream to it, low and misty.

“When I was a kid,” he said. “Ten years old or something. My dad took me and my brothers to those woods, to Henrietta State Park. He took us way in among the trees, which I guess would be against your rules, Sargent, but he did it anyway.”

“They’re not _my_ rules-”

“Whatever. He took us until we got to a clearing filled with boulders covered in moss. And then he told us that the woods were sacred. And in the olden days, witches and tree people came into the woods to worship. And they called this place Cabeswater.”

He took a long breath, closing his eyes. When he closed his eyes, he could see the clearing. He could see his father’s face.

He could feel that unwavering faith he had that his father was a good man.

“That’s it,” he said, after a few moments of silence. “He didn’t tell us any more to the story. That’s all I fucking remember.”

Blue was looking at him with that awful mix of pity and curiosity. Adam’s head was raised, his eyes on Ronan’s. Ronan didn’t look away.

Gansey cleared his throat.

“This is a lead,” he said. “I’m looking into this, for sure. Let me copy down the text of that letter- if that’s all right, Blue?”

“Yeah, no shit it’s all right,” she said. “That’s why I brought you these records.”

“I’ll copy the letter, then, and I’m going to look into Gwendolyn Owen and who exactly she is. See if she knows more about this Cabeswater. Because if it is linked to magic and to Owen, it could be the lead we’re looking for.”

“Hold on,” Blue said. “I’m sure I’ve seen her name before. Gwendolyn Owen. In the archives.”

Gansey perked up even further.

“Did you bring more files about her?” he asked. “Where have you seen her name before?”

“I don’t know,” Blue said, playing with a curl of her hair thoughtfully. Ronan didn’t miss how Adam and Gansey’s eyes both caught on that gesture. “I’ve looked in the archives before because, well, my biological dad had a lot of connections to this forest… I think I’ve seen her name in an old file that he was in, too. But I didn’t bring it with me, it was from the seventies, way later than the time period we’re looking at.”

Ronan leaned back in the armchair, studying Blue.

She was more interesting than he gave her credit for.

“Your biological dad?” Adam asked. “I thought that guy Gray was your dad.”

“No,” Blue said, grimacing. “That’s my mom’s gross boyfriend. No, my dad…”

A wistful look came over her face.

“My dad was a guy named Artemus,” she said. “And he loved the forest.”

“Artemus,” Gansey repeated. He was using _that_ voice, the one that seemed out of another time.

“Yeah,” Blue said, voice a little choked. “If you- if you want- we can look into the files with him. And look for Gwendolyn Owen in them. And before you ask,” she added, voice turning sharp again, “I can’t just ask him in person. Because I don’t know where he is.”

It was clear Gansey wanted to ask for further detail, but he was wise enough to not do that.

“Well, that’s settled,” he said instead. “We should head down to the archives and look over those files. Then we can know where to start when we head to the library-”

“Wait, right now?” Adam said.

“Of course right now. We should start right away.”

Adam looked a little uncomfortable.

“I have an essay due Monday,” he said. “And reading and problems to do for chem. And I’ve got work all day tomorrow; I can’t do it then.”

“Adam,” Gansey said petulantly. “This is a _lead_.”

“And this is homework,” Adam said, “which I have to do, because in case you’ve forgotten, I’m at Aglionby on scholarship.”

That shut Gansey up- he hated talking about Adam’s money or lack of it. It took him out of that easy comfort zone of forgetting there was any difference between them.

“Right,” he said awkwardly. “Well, I guess we’ll find another time-”

“You can still come with me down to the archives if you want,” Blue said. She sounded incredibly reluctant at the prospect of going anywhere with Gansey and without Adam. “We can get the files and then all meet up again at Nino’s sometime soon and discuss what we find.”

“Yes! Excellent,” Gansey said. “I’ll drive.”

“Have fun,” Ronan said, getting up. “I’ll stay here with Parrish.”

Adam looked up at him.

“Who said I’m staying here?”

“I did. It’s hot as fuck out and your apartment doesn’t have any fucking AC. You can’t concentrate on your fucking homework there.”

Adam’s eyes narrowed. Ronan knew damn well that Adam could go to the air-conditioned, far more comfortable campus library instead.

“Good point,” Adam said. “Fine. Blue, Gansey, we can meet up at Nino’s Monday night, I’m free then. But text me if you find anything really interesting.”

“I’ll be sure to,” Gansey said.

Gansey and Blue left, preceded by a handful of insults to Gansey’s wardrobe on the part of Blue, and then the house fell quiet.

“Don’t be annoying,” Adam warned Ronan, pulling out his ancient laptop. “I really have to get this essay done. It’s a fucking nightmare.”

“A nightmare?” Ronan asked. “How could that possibly be true? You’re a genius who finds nothing difficult.”

“Ha ha. It’s for my poli-sci class, it’s about institutional-”

“No, don’t explain it to me, I don’t really give a fuck,” Ronan said.

“You _asked_ why it was difficult.”

“I was trying to insult you.”

“Oh, well, thanks for that,” Adam said, rolling his eyes. Ronan’s face quirked into a smile which he forcibly pulled back into a scowl, and he said, “I’m going to the studio to work. Don’t bother me.”

“I won’t,” Adam said, already looking back at his laptop screen.

Ronan made his way back into the studio. The night horror, half-finished, was waiting for him, but he didn’t want to work on it.

He was thinking, now, about Cabeswater.

He heard Adam saying the word _Cabeswater_ while reading that letter. His voice had filled the word with that dusty, sunlit magic that Ronan associated with it. He remembered the way Adam had looked when they’d been walking in the woods. The look in his eyes, like wonder, at the world of trees around them, like something waiting to be woken.

He hadn’t thought of Cabeswater in a long time. Now that he thought about it again, he remembered how much he’d loved the thought of it. A forest made for magic, made for prayer. Adam belonged there, he thought.

He pulled out a sheet of paper and some watercolors. He cleared away the mess on the table and sat down to begin sketching an outline with pencil.

It was getting dusky outside when a voice interrupted him.

“Hey. Ronan.”

Ronan’s head snapped up. Adam was in the doorway.

“I thought I told you not to bother me,” Ronan said.

Ignoring this, Adam said, “You got anything in the house I can eat? I’m starving.”

“Uh, sure,” Ronan said, sliding out of his chair and heading out of the studio. Adam peered in behind him.

“You’re not working on the night horror,” he commented. “You’re drawing something.”

“Great observation skills.”

“I thought you were working on the night horror.”

“I don’t always work on the same shit, Parrish.”

“Hmm,” Adam said. He followed Ronan to the kitchen, where Ronan pulled out some Bagel Bites from the freezer, and asked, “What are you drawing?”

Ronan shrugged. He didn’t normally show people his drawings, but he’d shown Adam a few. He thought Adam might have gotten too accustomed to being allowed to see Ronan’s works in progress.

“Some stuff.”

“You know,” Adam said, “it’s no wonder you don’t sell your shit to galleries. You’re awful at describing it.”

“Ugh,” Ronan said, disgusted. “I can’t even imagine that. Presenting my work to a bunch of pretentious fuckers at some gallery.”

Adam laughed. “That’d be a disaster.”

Ronan stuck the Bagel Bites into the toaster and sat down at the kitchen table across from Adam.

“So,” he said, desperate to keep making conversation, to keep Adam in here not busy with his homework for just a few minutes at least. “How goes the essay?”

Adam made an indifferent noise. “It’s going. I dunno why I signed up for this fucking class. I’m an engineering major. Gansey’s the one who loves all these abstract sociological concepts, not me.”

“Well,” Ronan said. “You finally found a class that you’re not the best in?”

“Oh, well, I’m still the best in the class,” Adam said, smiling somewhat jokingly. “But that’s more because everyone else is an idiot.”

“That’s not too hard to believe.”

They talked for a bit about Adam’s classes. Ronan didn’t really give a shit about Aglionby classes, but he liked hearing Adam talk about his interests.

This was easy. Just talking with Adam in his kitchen, looking at him, listening to him, being friends. He could keep doing this. Even if it was torture. It was easy torture.

When Adam had finished eating, he wandered off out of the kitchen, and it took Ronan a minute before he realized that Adam had gone in the direction of the studio, not the living room.

“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered, and ran after him.

But Adam hadn’t gone into the studio, he was just standing outside of it, peering in. He startled a bit when Ronan appeared behind him.

“What are you looking at?” Ronan demanded.

“I…” Adam said. “I just was stopping in the doorway. Jesus. You don’t have to get all defensive on me.”

“I wasn’t getting defensive. I just don’t like anyone going into my studio without me.”

“Fine. Can I come into the studio?”

Ronan sighed. “Yeah.”

Adam walked in and walked up to the desk, and looked down at the drawing Ronan had been working on. It was only tentative, but it was recognizable what it was. Ronan stood still by the doorway, not saying anything.

Finally, Adam said, “It’s Cabeswater.”

He looked up. Ronan nodded.

Then Adam said, “You’ve been thinking about Cabeswater, too, right? Ever since we went into the woods last week.”

Ronan nodded again.

“Did you tell the whole story, about what your dad told you about it?”

Ronan shook his head.

Adam looked at him without speaking.

“Cabeswater wasn’t just the woods,” Ronan said, finally. “It was the part of the woods you got to if the nymphs thought you were worthy. It was a forest made of magic. And the forest we went to had portals into it.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Adam asked.

“Because,” Ronan said, “I was going to try and go there myself.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Yeah, well, I’m stupid.”

“You shouldn’t go yourself,” Adam said. “We should go. Or at least try to go.”

Ronan eyed him. He looked serious.

“Now?” Ronan asked.

Adam’s eyebrows quirked, something of a challenge.

“Why not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no idea if this is any good, haha, please let me know  
> also... yes I realize there's like 400 problems with Ronan letting a nameless six-year-old girl just come over to his house whenever and not trying to get to know her parents or anything, but Ronan's clueless and will also eventually be told off for this  
> also... I'm gonna be doing Pynch week prompts for the next week so this won't be updated for a decent while, most likely.   
> Thank you for reading as always!

**Author's Note:**

> I did a lot of plot development for this but I'll mainly focus on character stuff, hopefully. Also, there will be some Bluesey in this (possibly Sarchengsey once Henry Cheng shows up) but it's mainly about Pynch.  
> I'm on tumblr at arielmagicesi if you want to talk to me there! Let me know what you think!


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